Public state-sponsored prayer has created fault lines

Matt Soergel

Saturday

Oct 27, 2012 at 11:27 PM

Most weekdays, Ron Baker is still leading prayers at schools in Clay County. Well, he's just outside the schools' property lines, unless it's the elementary school where his grandchildren go: The School Board told him, he says, that as a grandpa, with his grandkids, he's allowed to pray with them on campus.

Baker, pastor at Russell Baptist Church near Green Cove Springs, was in the headlines in 2011. They came after the county's school system told him he could no longer lead organized prayer on school property - a controversy that took him as far as Fox News.

He now abides by the rules set for him, he says, but he still prays outside schools.

"Honestly, I didn't look at it as a thing of importance," he said. "It was just something I did, until it was threatened to be taken away or stopped or interfered with."

Public prayer - or more accurately, the idea of prayer that seems to be state-sponsored - is a thorny, long-running issue. It has passionate people on either side, and in the middle, too.

It's the topic of a Tuesday evening panel discussion at the University of North Florida, one that has the hopeful aim of encouraging civil discourse on public prayer.

Julie Ingersoll, a UNF religious studies professor and participant in the panel, said she's not going to advocate for a certain position. Rather, she'll set the stage for a discussion.

"What I'm going to talk about is the difficulty of re-creating what, quote, the founders thought. They didn't all agree. You can't just naively go back to this pristine era and think, oh, the founders thought this. I say 'my founders,' you say 'your founders,' and we're stuck, with nowhere to go."

It's tangled.

Baker, the Clay County preacher, is part of the UNF panel, too. He says he knows what the founders meant: America's a Christian nation, "from our roots to our top branches."

That doesn't mean it's not diverse, he says. And many times people ask him: What about Islamic prayer? What about Wiccans?

Baker says go right ahead: He won't stick around for it, but he's not going to stop them - just as he wouldn't want anyone stopping him.

"I know it may not be politically correct, but I doubt we're going to get a whole lot of Muslims in this area where we are," he said. "There may be in your area, but not here. That could be an issue in some parts of the country, but not in Clay County. Or Wiccans for that matter. This is sleepy little Clay County."

In bustling Jacksonville, though, the issue comes up, too.

In 2010, Jack Webb, then president of Jacksonville's City Council, put in place a policy that leaders of diverse faiths would lead prayer before City Council meetings.

Overtly Christian prayers had come under fire from the ACLU and the Anti-Defamation League, amid the controversy following the nomination of Parvez Ahmed, a Muslim, to the city's Human Rights Commission.

The council has since gone to solely Christian prayers, which take place just seconds before the meeting convenes and just after it adjourns.

BILL OF RIGHTS

The whole discussion pivots, John Knechtle says, on the Bill of Rights' First Amendment establishment clause, which says that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."

Knechtle teaches constitutional law at Florida Coastal School of Law. He's also co-author of a couple of textbooks, including "The First Amendment: Cases, Problems and Materials."

The American colonies had official religions, he said, and religious intolerance was rampant, which led to the establishment clause.

Thank secularism for whatever religious tolerance we have had since then, says Jacques Berlinerblau of Georgetown University. In his book, "How to Be Secular: A Call to Arms for Religious Freedom," he takes pains to explain that secularism doesn't mean freedom from religion - just freedom from state religion.

And that, he writes, has made America safe for all religions: "Secularism, far from being the enemy of religious pluralism, is its guarantor."

Kyle Reese is pastor of Hendricks Avenue Baptist Church and chair-elect of the board of OneJax Institute, an interfaith group that's co-sponsoring the UNF discussion Tuesday.

He understands the frustrations some Christians feel about restrictions on prayer.

He notes, though, that separation of church and state has "been a Baptist hallmark from the beginning."

Why? "We were the minority, in the beginning," he said.

That feeling has changed for some. "I see that wall wanting to be knocked down by some, but there's a wide diversity of opinion on that," he said.

Knechtle said to keep in mind that it's state-sponsored prayer that the legal system concerns itself with, not simply public prayer. Public prayer among private groups is private, protected speech.

COURTS WEIGH IN

One turning point was a 1962 Supreme Court decision about organized prayer in public schools.

"Even that phrase, 'getting prayer out of public schools' - it's true it got rid of sponsored prayer by school authorities, but individuals or groups can certainly pray," Knechtle said.

The court has been consistent since then when it comes to school prayer, figuring that it concerns itself with minors who are easily influenced, he said.

That's different from prayers by legislators - cities, states, even the U.S. Congress.

"The court has upheld that practice, pointing back to history," Knechtle said. "Even when the establishment clause was drafted, they were having prayers to begin their meeting."

And the prayers that begin Jacksonville City Council meetings, for example?

"Right now, that would seem to be constitutional, though many people think it is not," he said.

So the controversy continues.

To navigate that controversy, Reese has this guidance for his fellow Christians: Look at the situation. Be sensitive to others.

"To love our neighbors as ourselves, to do unto others as we would have them do unto us, is to look at what prayer is like in a civic situation," he said.

"How can I be faithful to what my faith is, and recognize that there are people in the room of diverse faiths, for Christians to recognize that we are not the only ones in the room?"

Matt Soergel: (904) 359-4082

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